help

Motorola and Google may have officially split up, however the search giant has retained the interactive short film brand known as Spotlight Stories that was featured on the Moto X and Moto G smartphones. This newer filmmaking technology pushes stories from the big screens of the theater to a person’s mobile device and features engaging cues that impact the way the story told and heard. For example, if a helicopter were to follow a vehicle as part of a car chase, a viewer would be able to lift their phone upward to get a closer look at the iron bird in hot pursuit.

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[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K-VFC9AQM1k]

As we reported previously, Google has just publicly launched a new platform for getting real-time help with any problem you might be facing. Helpouts is a new video chat service that lets you talk one-on-one with experts in a variety of fields such as art, fashion, healthcare, and gardening.

Some of the Helpouts are free while others will cost per session or per minute, depending on the topic and the expert. The chats are powered by Hangouts, but only involve two parties—you and your instructor. The instructors can set times that they are available for a Helpout, and users can book a session in advance. Instructors credentials, certifications, and experience are listed right on the booking page and users can leave reviews of their sessions.

It appears Google will at least partly be allowing providers on Helpouts manage their own experts. For example, TakeLessons, one of Google’s partners providing music lessons on Helpouts explained out it will offer services by tapping into the experts already using its own service:

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As the CyanogenMod team works to continue releasing new “nightly builds” of its custom Android firmware, it just released a blog post this morning asking for donations from the community. The team said it needed donations to purchase new servers to keep releasing new builds.

CyanogenMod is not a for-profit business. We are just a bunch of geeks, trying to make our phones more awesome. The donations we get currently cover our operating costs and occasionally go towards developer devices. This time, I need to ask for help from the community for something a bit larger. We need to purchase these servers in order to bring the build infrastructure back to full capacity.

The CyanogenMod community quickly jumped into action, and the CyanogenMod team earned the money it needed (and perhaps a bit more) in only a few short hours to purchase the necessary servers. The team will buy “Xeon-class boxes with lots of RAM” next week. Check out the full statement below:

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